[close up of old man speaking:] People said “Well this is the primitive stuff, the primitive stuff about music.”
[video of country]

[video of people in church singing] Before any great gathering they had music to gather the people together, it excites people, it makes them happy, makes them sad, it makes them want to sing.

The earliest music in America was not reserved by the academies, and institutions, but instead by unschooled rural southerners, who sang not for an audience but for one another, and God.  “I grew up singing sacred harp, and going to all day singing harps with my grandmother.” [pictures of people in church]  “I started singing sacred harmony in 1952.” [video of people singing sacred harp music in churches]  “When I sat down and heard that I said it was just like I had received salvation.”  “Like no other feeling I have in the world, when you’re up there singing that is when I feel my best.”  “It’s just like a wall of sound.”  “I feel like sometimes I’m just going to be lifted up by the ground that’s shaking under me.”  “At one point he said, “Do you want to sound like a bunch of untutored southerners, and everybody said “YES!”” 

(Music)

“My favorite song is the one I’m singin’.”